I pressed her hand to my throbbing temples and burning lips. “Forgive me,” I exclaimed, “for I know not what I do.” She threw herself on a seat, and covered her face with her hands, while the tears trickled through her fingers. Oh! there was a time when tears from those eyes--but now they only recalled to my recollection the last I had seen her shed. I started from her feet and walked towards the window, near that couch where her watchful and charitable attention first awakened the germ of gratitude and love which has since blown into such full, such fatal existence. I leaned my head against the window-frame for support, its painful throb was so violent; I felt as though it were lacerating in a thousand places; and the sigh which involuntarily breathed from my lips seemed almost to burst the heart from whence it flowed. Glorvina arose: with an air tenderly compassionate, yet reproachful, she advanced and took one of my hands. “My dear friend,” she exclaimed, “what is the matter? has anything occurred to disturb you, or to awaken this extraordinary emotion? Father John! where is he? why does he not accompany you? Speak!--does any new misfortune threaten us? does it touch my father? Oh! in mercy say _it does not!_ but release me from the torture of suspense.” “No, no,” I peevishly replied; “set your heart at rest, it is nothing; nothing at least that concerns you; it is me, me only it concerns.” “And therefore, Mortimer, is it nothing to Glorvina,” she softly replied, and with one of those natural motions so incidental to the simplicity of her manners, she threw her hand on my shoulder, and leaning her head on it raised her eloquent, her tearful eyes to mine. Oh! while the bright drops hung upon her cheek’s faded rose, with what difficulty I restrained the impulse that tempted me to gather them with my lips; while she, like a ministering angel, again took my hand, and applying her fingers to my wrist, said, with a sad smile, “You know I am a skilful little doctress.” The feelings I experienced when those lovely fingers first applied their pressure to my arm, rushed on my recollection: her touch had lost nothing of its electric power: my emotions at that moment were indescribable. “Oh, good God, how ill you are!” she exclaimed. “How wild your pulse; how feverish your looks! You have overheated yourself; you were unequal to such a journey in such weather; you who have been so lately an invalid. I beseech you to throw yourself on the bed, and endeavour to take some repose; meantime I will send my nurse with some refreshment to you. How could I be so blind as not to see at once how ill you were!”